A Forgotten Scandal: How the Nazi Spy Case of 1938 Affected American Neutrality and German Diplomatic Opinion

Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones

istorians tend to ignore the role of intelligence in Clyde Tolson, the detective had “an uncanny knack of foreign policy decision-making.1 The reason for this securing information.” Chicago special agent in charge Earl is obvious. As intelligence historians themselves Connelley said he was the “best investigator of criminal Hhave noted, presidents have tended to neglect findings violations in the bureau.”6 Yet by the end of the decade he based on secretly obtained information. Why, then, should had been fired. the foreign policy historian give intelligence more than its How did he fall so precipitously from grace? In the 1930s due?2 the FBI was, as it is today, the nation’s premier detective There is one facet of intelligence history to which agency. To have been the best detective in the best detective scholars normally do pay attention—spy scandals. agency is quite an achievement. A most singular series of The corrupt intent of French agents in the XYZ Affair events must have occurred to cause Turrou to fall out of occasioned, when exposed, a scandal favor and into historical obscurity. and a diplomatic crisis that historians Turrou’s personal history was a have by no means ignored. The scandal tangle of half-truths and lies. He was of the Zimmermann telegram helped born Leon Turovsky, in the Russian- draw the United States into World War controlled town of Kobryn, Poland, I, and it has inspired a proper measure on September 14, 1895. He gave widely of attention. In later years, historians divergent accounts of his early years. linked the Alger Hiss spy scandal He said he was not Jewish, but he with increasing tensions between the was. He said he was an orphan, but United States and the Soviet Union. he was not. He said he fought with the Such events appear not just in foreign French Foreign Legion on World War policy tomes, but also in the narratives I’s Western Front and had a shrapnel of general textbooks.3 wound to show for it. An FBI medical The Nazi spy case of 1938 was examination confirmed the wound, but also a major scandal in its day, yet it on another occasion Turrou claimed to received only scattered references in have fought on the Eastern Front. So the literature.4 As we shall see below, cavalier was his approach to the truth this was in large measure because FBI that it gave ammunition to his future director J. Edgar Hoover suppressed detractors. But it may also have been a key dimension of the story. The a trait that contributed to his ability to story needs to be revived because, as detect mendacity in criminal suspects. we shall also see, the scandal helped This much we know for sure. He to erode American neutrality, and arrived at New York’s Ellis Island German diplomats thought it ruined immigration processing depot the chances of Washington-Berlin on March 12, 1913. After casual harmony. employment and an unhappy love On the FBI’s official website there affair with a girl called Olga, he does is a reference to one of America’s appear to have returned to Europe to greatest detectives, Leon Turrou. The Leon G. Turrou. In 1938, he smashed a Nazi spy fight against Germany. Recovering website explains that in 1938, Turrou ring and launched a campaign for preparedness. from his war wound in a Paris was the bureau’s lead investigator Courtesy of Leon’s grandson Bob Turrou. hospital, he met his future wife, Teresa into a German spy ring. However, this Zakrewski. Eventually they had two official FBI narrative observes that his “background simply sons. did not prepare him for the nuances of an espionage case” In 1921, Turrou was in Russia with the American Relief and notes that he stood “accused of being an overzealous Mission, led by Herbert Hoover. By then the master of government agent motivated by profit and fame.”5 seven languages, he was a translator with a mind of his FBI records from the 1930s, accessed through the own. When corrupt communist soldiers held up U.S. grain Freedom of Information Act, tell a more rounded story. deliveries, he prodded his boss to confront the notorious Initially, Turrou was the apple of FBI director J. Edgar Soviet secret service chief, Felix Dzerzhinsky. According to Hoover’s eye. According to Hoover’s trusted confidant Turrou, it was a tense meeting, but he helped to persuade Passport September 2020 Page 45 Dzerzhinsky to release the grain. Dzerzhinsky issued an information on the computerization of code setting and order to his comrades “with not a trace of emotion on his breaking; the design of aircraft retraction devices on the deathmask face”: “The trains will move, and if you fail, the latest class of aircraft carriers; and blueprints of the new supreme punishment is waiting for you.”7 generation of American fighter planes. By 1921, J. Edgar Hoover wanted Turrou for his agency In the wider, wicked world that lay beyond the United (then called the Bureau of Investigation). Turrou could States, such peacetime espionage was standard practice. not join because he lacked the normative law degree and But it shocked Americans, who were not as accustomed to because of a postwar contraction in bureau hiring. However, having their country spied upon. There were, moreover, in the presidential election of 1929, he used his linguistic some nastier than usual aspects to spying by the Abwehr, skills to campaign on New York’s multi-ethnic East Side which was increasingly penetrated and influenced by Nazi for the ultimate victor, Herbert Hoover. His reward was an political officers and the fascist secret police, the Gestapo. appointment to the bureau as a special agent. There was an element of ruthlessness that one would not Though physically tough, Turrou was a cerebral person. have expected anywhere in peacetime: a plan to kidnap By the time he was assigned to the spy case in February and possibly murder a U.S. Army officer who knew about 1938, he had applied his forensic faculties to over 3,000 America’s East Coast defenses; the infiltration of Gestapo cases. He developed certain interrogative techniques, such agents into New York; the probable murder of two innocent as offering a cigarette at the right moment, or springing Californian women in an effort to pressure a San Francisco a witness on an off-guard suspect just when the suspect industrialist into cooperating with the Abwehr;9 and a was telling critical untruths. Building on an uncanny plan, discussed with Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the ability to understand and exploit people’s personalities Abwehr, to set up a high-class brothel in Washington, DC, and weaknesses, he had a mesmerizing effect on those he to honeytrap military officers and government officials. questioned. Finally, although the German Criminals who knew that to word abwehr means “defense,” the talk to him meant signing their agency had an aggressive program own death warrants did so anyway. that went far beyond the mere An example occurred in the course theft of technology. The Abwehr of the Lindbergh kidnapping chased after data on American investigation. In March 1932, Bruno defense installations, not just along Richard Hauptmann climbed into the East Coast, but also in other the second-floor bedroom of Charles strategic areas such the Panama Lindbergh’s twenty-month-old son at Canal. It was interested in potential the Lindbergh home near Hopewell, bombing targets. It planned to New Jersey, abducted him, and sent use a member of its charm squad, a ransom note to Lindbergh. By the Kate Moog, to open an avenue to time the bureau caught up with strategic thinking in the White Hauptmann, the little boy was dead. House. Once Hitler had taken Fearing the death penalty, the care of Europe, his next target for murderer proved a hard nut to aggression was the United States. crack. Turrou sat with Hauptmann With his customary for hours. The killer knew he shrewdness and intuition, Turrou should not supply an example exposed most of the personnel Ambassador Hans Heinrich Dieckhoff bids goodbye to of his handwriting that could be American journalists he had befriended prior to his recall the of the Nazi spy ring in America compared with the handwriting Germany at the time of the Nazi spy trial in November 1938. and revealed their aims and on the ransom note. Yet Turrou Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-123456. methodology. He made mistakes. persuaded him, against his better Notably, he allowed one of his prize judgment, to write out passages informants to leave the United from the Wall Street Journal. Hauptmann went to the electric States. Ignatz Griebl was a New York gynecologist and chair in April 1936. prominent anti-Semite who doubled as a local coordinator The German intelligence operation exposed in 1938 was of Abwehr espionage. Moog was his mistress, and he often called the “Rumrich spy ring” after Guenther Gustave promoted the Washington brothel idea. Griebl told Turrou Maria Rumrich, a minor cog in the greater machine who he was afraid to return to Germany, since it was known just happened to be the first spy arrested. Turrou insisted he had talked to the FBI. But before he could appear in the in calling it instead the “Nazi spy ring,” and showed it to be courtroom, he suddenly left for his homeland, where the a much more serious affair. A section of American opinion Berlin regime rewarded him handsomely, expropriating a disagreed with him—the New York Times declared that Jewish vacation property in Bavaria and a Jewish medical in an age of transparency espionage was redundant, and practice in Vienna and gifting both to its valued spy. warned that the outbreak of spy hysteria might lead to the Nevertheless, armed with information he had formation of an American “super-espionage” agency that extracted from Griebl, Rumrich, Moog, and many other was not “wanted or needed here.”8 interviewees, Turrou pieced together the evidence that led Turrou was certainly correct in emphasizing the to the conviction of four spies in a widely publicized trial in menace posed to American values and national security by the fall of 1938. But before the trial began, the ace detective the Abwehr, the German spying organization. The Abwehr resigned from the FBI to start a financially rewarding but had come into being in 1920, in breach of the terms of the also deeply moral campaign against the Nazis. He lectured Treaty of Versailles. Abwehr agents sought and obtained and talked on the radio extensively. He wrote articles for the information about new military technology. Hitler, aware New York Post that subsequently appeared as a bestselling of the emergence of U.S. technological superiority, wanted book, Nazi Spies in America. The book became a Warner America’s secrets so that Germany could duplicate them Brothers movie, Confessions of a Nazi Spy, featuring Edward and so that his armed forces would know what they faced G. Robinson in the role of a character based on Turrou. Even if and when they fought against the United States. Hitler’s in 1939, a year of great movies, this one stood out, both for spies sent home a lot of trivia, but also some vital secrets: for its box-office success and its explicit hostility to the Nazis. example, details of the Norden gyroscopic bombsight; the The Turrou-inspired campaign proved to be a significant hull design of the new generation of top-speed destroyers; eddy in the stream of anti-neutrality propaganda. Page 46 Passport September 2020 Turrou’s enthusiastic embrace of publicity was the albeit with the lower rank of chargé d’affaires. Espionage reason he fell from grace. Hoover wanted to keep control of problems continued to crop up during his tenure. In 1940, for his agency’s image. As on other occasions, he aimed to deter example, U.S. diplomat Tyler Kent was accused of stealing the desertion, for more lucrative pastures, of the special the Churchill-Roosevelt correspondence in an attempt to agents the FBI had so painstakingly selected and trained. expose Roosevelt’s interventionist intentions and influence He dismissed Turrou retroactively, “with prejudice,” from the 1940 presidential election. Learning in May 1940 of a date prior to the special agent’s resignation, thereby another potential embarrassment—the Abwehr’s plan to depriving him of pension rights. He then he tried to sabotage ships on the Baltimore waterfront—Thomsen blacklist him from further federal employment.10 In spite of warned his foreign office that such deeds were “the surest this treatment, the gifted detective helped the United States way of bringing America into action on the side of our hunt down genocidal criminals in World War II. However, enemies and of destroying the last vestiges of sympathy for he then emigrated to France to take charge of security for Germany.”16 the petro-industrialist J. Paul Getty. By the time he died in That message went right to the top: Foreign Minister Paris in 1986, he had joined the list of America’s forgotten Joachim von Ribbentrop forwarded Thomsen’s warning heroes. directly to the Fuehrer. And when news of the Duquesne The 1938 spy scandal had a number of consequences. It spy ring arrests reached Ribbentrop in 1941, he complained spurred President Roosevelt to expand America’s capability to Admiral Canaris, warning the Abwehr chief that he in counterespionage. It enabled J. Edgar Hoover to take would be held personally accountable should the United pioneering steps in exploring the possibility of centrally States declare war on Germany.17 directed intelligence in defense of U.S. national security.11 Dieckhoff, Thomsen, and Ribbentrop believed that the Roosevelt’s critics complained about a further consequence: 1938 spy case and its aftermath had changed American the scare gave FDR the opportunity to increase his own opinion, and that public opinion steered U.S. foreign authority, even to the extent of using the FBI to spy on his policy. In one way it was a simplistic assumption, perhaps domestic critics.12 springing from an awe-struck faith in American democratic But what concerns us here is the impact of the spy process, a faith fostered by the lack of democracy and press scandal on public opinion and international affairs. The freedom in Germany, where, in contrast to the rest of the scandal was a domestic event, and domestic issues have world, there was scarcely any reporting on the U.S. spy greater resonance with the electorate than foreign events cases.18 Less simplistically, there was a tactical advantage (such as Kristallnacht, which took place at the same time the in blaming Germany’s spies for the change in American spy trial did). It is reasonable to assume that the scandal opinion. It was an evasion of the less palatable truth that helped to move opinion away from neutrality—and did so there was a growing disgust with fascism in the United to a greater extent than the Duquesne spy scandal of 1941, States. which was larger in scale but became public knowledge at With dismay, leading German diplomats wrote off a much later date, in the final months before the United the chances of maintaining good relations with America. States joined the war. Its impact on the neutrality debate Hitler’s stance gave no grounds for reassurance. He had was significant and needs to be noted as a corrective to once been an admirer of the United States, and for strategic previous scholarship. It may be no more than a partial reasons Germany still hoped for American neutrality. But corrective, as other factors, such as the lobbying activities North America figured in his plans for world domination, of the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, and his views were plain. In 1938, he denounced America were collectively more important in eroding support for as a “Jewish rubbish heap,”19 and in the spring of 1941, neutrality, but it is a corrective nevertheless.13 he assured Japan’s foreign minister Yosuke Matsuoka The need for a further adjustment to existing accounts that Germany country would intervene “immediately in becomes apparent when one considers German diplomats’ the event of conflict between Japan and America.”20 That reactions to the 1938 spy scandal and to recurring spy promise was made in the hope that Japan would attack the episodes. Hans-Heinrich Dieckhoff was appointed British Empire rather than the United States, but the anti- ambassador to the United States in May 1937. Without American sentiment was unmistakable. Hitler knew that benefit of the opinion polls that George Gallup was then Japan’s minister for war and soon to be prime minister, pioneering, Dieckhoff assumed that before 1938, most U.S. Hideki Tojo, held Germany in high esteem and the United citizens had a favorable view of Germany. But in January States in contempt.21 of that year, he detected a dip in Germany’s popularity. When Germany’s diplomats fatefully wrote off the He attributed that decline to the activities of the German- United States as a friend, they did so knowing about Hitler’s American Bund and the perception that this German- attitude, and also believing, or pretending to believe, that American society was a Nazi Trojan horse. Dieckhoff was their country’s spies had ended the possibility of continuing not one of Hitler’s greatest admirers, and he took a dim view friendship between the two nations. of the Fuehrer’s crude attempts at subverting America.14 After learning of the arrest of a number of spies in the Notes: wake of Turrou’s detective work, Dieckhoff at first tried 1. This essay is drawn from my forthcoming book, The Nazi Spy to negotiate a deal whereby a small number of selected Ring in America: Hitler’s Agents, the FBI, and the Case that Stirred the spies would plead guilty on the understanding that there Nation (Washington, DC, September 2020). 2. Christopher Andrew and David Dilks, eds., The Missing would be no sensational trial. It was not to be. When Dimension: Governments and Intelligence in the Twentieth Century Dieckhoff visited Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles (London, 1984), 1; Christopher Andrew, For the President’s on November 1 (with the highly publicized trial under Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency: From way), he was in an agitated state. He agreed the spies were Washington to Bush (London, 1995), 1–5; Stephen Marin, “Why guilty, but he asserted that “persons of lesser authority in Strategic Analysis Has Limited Influence on American Foreign Germany who were acting on their own initiative without Policy,” Intelligence and National Security 32/6 (2017): 725. 3. John M. Murrin et al., Liberty Equality Power: A History of the orders from the top” had instructed the German agents— nd thus making it clear that he knew the Nazis had penetrated American People, 2 ed. (Orlando, FL, 1999); 288, 770, 933–6; Paul the Abwehr.15 S. Boyer and others, The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People, 6th ed. (Boston, 2009), 288, 770, 933–6. Berlin recalled Dieckhoff just after his conversation 4. Francis MacDonnell notes that the case prompted President with Welles. He did not return to Washington, and would Franklin D. Roosevelt to boost U.S. counterintelligence funding. remain ambassador in name only. Hans Thomsen, counselor See MacDonnell, Insidious Foes: The Axis Fifth Column and the at the Washington embassy, took over Dieckhoff’s duties, American Home Front (Oxford, UK, 1995), 137. Raymond Batvinis Passport September 2020 Page 47 remarks on Roosevelt’s reaction to the case and notes without comment the German diplomatic reaction to it; see Batvinis, The Origins of FBI Counterintelligence (Lawrence, KS, 2007), 24, 255. 5. https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/rumrich-nazi-spy- case. 6. Tolson, “L. G. Turrou . . . remarks,” 6 November 1935, FBIT 1/2/1; and Earl Connelley, cited in H. Nathan, efficiency assessment of Turrou, 4 November 1931. FBIT refers to the FBI file on Leon Turrou, obtained via Freedom of Information Request No. 1366027- 000. The sequential numbers identify Files, Sections and Serials. 7. Leon G. Turrou, “An Unwritten Chapter,” a typescript that Turrou offered to “the next edition of the ARA [American Relief Administration] ‘Review,’” enclosed with Turrou to Brooks, 12 September 1926, in Collection no. YY545, Hoover Institute Library, Stanford, CA. 8. New York Times, December 1, 1938. 9. Clint Richmond, Fetch the Devil: The Sierra Diablo Murders and Nazi Espionage in America (Lebanon, NY, 2014), 317. 10. Hoover, Memorandum for Mr. Tolson, June 30, 1938, FBIT 1/2/1. 11. Batvinis, Origins, 54. 12.Douglas M. Charles, J. Edgar Hoover and the Anti-interventionists: FBI Political Surveillance and the Rise of the Domestic Security State, 1939–1945 (Columbus, OH, 2007), 3. 13.David Reynolds, From Munich to Pearl Harbor: Roosevelt’s America and the Origins of the Second World War (Chicago, 2001), 92. 14. Arthur L. Smith Jr., “The Foreign Organization of the Nazi Party and the United States, 1931–39,” in Germany and America: Essays on Problems of International Relations and Immigration, ed. Hans L. Trefousse (New York, 1981), 179; Warren F. Kimball, “Dieckhoff and America: A German’s View of German-American Relations, 1937–1941,” The Historian 27 (February 1965): 219. 15. Welles, Memorandum of conversation, November 1, 1938, Foreign Relations of the United States Diplomatic Papers, 1938, The British Commonwealth, Europe, Near East, and Africa, II, eds. Matilda F. Axton et al. (Washington, DC, 1954), Document 359. 16. Thomsen memorandum for Reich Minister of Foreign Affairs Joachim von Ribbentrop, 22 May 1940, Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918–1945: From the Archives of the German Foreign Ministry (London: HMSO, 1949–1983), Series D, IX, Document 299. 17. Ribbentrop-Canaris meeting reported by the new head of the American desk at the Abwehr’s Berlin headquarters, Friedrich Busch, in “History of the Special Intelligence Service Division” (1947), II, 435, FBI Vault. 18. One exception was an oblique mention in the Hamburger Nachrichten, 19 June 1938. 19. Hitler is quoted in James V. Compton, The Swastika and the Eagle: Hitler, the United States and the Origins of the Second World War (London, 1968), 17. 20. Hitler is quoted in Brendan Simms, Hitler: Only the World Was Enough (London, 2019), 413. 21. Courtney Browne, Tojo: The Last Banzai (London, 1967), 25.

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